ABSTRACT ART IN FASHION

LITERATURE REVIEW
Art and its influence on fashion, has a very broad spectrum. Art in its own aspect can vary from
fine arts to performing arts, from paintings and sculptures to Broadway musicals. When you
consider fashion it can deal with an innumerable amount of things, varying from clothing to
footwear and jewellery to beauty, hair and makeup. In order to make this study more feasible I
limited my scope to Paintings and Women’s clothing. I will survey the most relevant and
significant literature in relation to my topic.

When conducting my literature review I considered literary sources pertaining to the

fundamentals of art and fashion. I looked into the history of the two subjects by way of published
books and museum explorations. I also looked into books published on how art influences
fashion and fashions impact on art. My literary investigation also explores the online world. I
used search engines with terms such as ‘Art and fashion’ and art movements for instance ‘Op-
Art’ and ‘Art deco’ to generate articles written on the subjects. I went through online archives of
news papers and online journals to find any articles written on either fashion or art.

Fashion and art are two disciplines that revolve around the same sphere, which is creativity. The
two worlds share a bridge that links the two together. Art in its own aspect has followed
humanity through its times and the world of fashion has also been synonymous to it. The two
mediums share a close relationship.

Fashion has its deep roots set in self expressionism, a means to show the world our personality
by way of body adornment and clothing. Art as well tends to articulate the thoughts of the artist
across to the spectator, by the colors that have been used to the mood that the artwork brings
about. These elements could say a lot about the artist and his personality, just as much as a dark
makeup and ripped jeans could say in context to self expressionism in fashion.

The dissertation is a study on the influence on art on fashion and how fashion impacts art. It
generates from the Period of Rococo, all the way into the modern world, and showcases the
significance of art and fashion in the development and harmonious existence of the two subjects.

From Chanel’s art-fair-style runway to Dress Abstracts combination of abstract art and high
quality clothing, the special relationship between the same-but-different worlds of art and
fashion is becoming very profitable. When you think of someone who loves art you think of
them as educated and knowledgeable but when you think of someone who has an interest in
fashion we think of them as silly and foolish. When one buys art, it’s called “collecting” but
when a fashion enthusiast collects clothing, it’s called “shopping”. Despite this much-litigated
list of showing the relations between the concepts and categories of art and fashion, the two are
combining more than ever. In fact, it’s very possible that the moment has never been better.
The combination of art and fashion is by no means a newly found phenomenon. In 1937, Elsa
Schiaparelli joined forces with Salvador Dali to produce a surreal, lobster-print gown made of
silk organza and synthetic horsehair. Fast forward to 2016 and you have a company like Dress
Abstract combining high fashion with abstract art. This new company creates wearable art while
supporting refugees at the same time. Dress Abstract truly blend the worlds of art and fashion
and in turn create a masterpiece.

Founder Nima Veiseh sees his work in no uncertain terms, he simply describes it as “we bring art
to life”. Each item of Dress Abstract apparel features an original rendering and is then signed and
numbered just like all his prints. There is no company like Dress Abstract; there are companies
that help artists put their art onto clothing but according to Veiseh “we create certified, limited-
edition pieces, tracked and signed by the artist”.

The ideal customer of Dress Abstract is someone who appreciates the aesthetic beauty, as well as
the timeless quality of their pieces. “We are more interested in creating a thousand timeless,
collectible items than in trying to sell ten million T-shirts," Veiseh says.

Are you interested in owning and wearing one of these wonderful pieces of art? Dress Abstract
has both a men’s collection and women’s collection with pieces ranging from yoga pants and
sweatshirts to the traditional trench coat and neck ties. Visit their online store today
at www.DressAbstract.com and purchase your very own wearable piece of art.

Art and fashion are like warp and weft, twined naturally into each other. A new breed of younger
artists from the world over is now trying to create a contemporary visual language to express
abstract narratives with symbols from popular fashion.

Faseeh Salim, a Pakistani textile designer-turned artist, uses textiles, fibres, knits, embroidery
and mannequins as mediums to make installations and visuals that are fashion on the surface but
works of art with deep meaning on the broad canvas.

"They are journeys in self-expression with a political, social and cultural message," Lahore-
based Salim, who was in India for a residency programme, told IANS.

Salim knits body-like sculptures with matex fibre which shrinks when exposed to heat in
combination with stainless steel fibre. The sculptures are knitted on industrial knitting machines,
"ones on which they knit sweaters", and moulded to show the "fluid body statistics in the world
of fashion and its relation with clothes that have to fit", the artist said.
One of his sculptures, 36"26"36", made in India, experiments with shop mannequins as a
reference point for articles of clothings in which the body becomes a slave to the fibres that
drape it. The earthy colours and ethnic art of India are at the core of young Taiwanese artist
Andy Wen's digitally printed "art clothes".

"I am from an arts background, but I am moving to fashion. I am trying to create digitally-printed
India-style clothes for women. The Indian prints are accessible and different...Art and fashion
meet at many points," Yen told IANS.

The artist, who was in India recently, created a range of 12 fusion Chinese-Indian clothes in
cotton and silk painted with Indian motifs. The art of copying, traditional fashion drawings and
installation art meet in Mumbai-based artist Archana Hande's new mixed media work, Copy
Master ji.

Hande often uses textile printing technology on solid mediums like wood blocks to transform
traditional Indian art into modern decorative designs that comment on urbanisation and
globalisation.

"Everything is art. Art and fashion are two different mediums, but they both express. If I can
design a costume that looks good on you, it is art," Hande told IANS. Norwegian Julie Skarland,
a fashion designer, moved to Delhi six years ago to make a career in conceptual art and fashion.

"My exposure to art and fashion helps me explore both the mediums in my work," Skarland told
IANS. The artist, who trained in art and architecture in Norway, has studied dress making and
fashion design in Paris.

"The Collection", a new installation by Skarland, is a set of open matchboxes on which Skarland
reproduces a spring-summer women's wear collection in miniature drawings combining
Norwegian progressiveness with Parisian chic on an essentially Indian medium.

"I use recycled material like old fabrics and table cloths for my clothes and it inspires me to
recycle objects for my installation. I usually work towards developing a concept," the artist said.

Kolkata-based artist Paula Sengupta falls back on the nostalgia of the Bengal partition and
human suffering with elements of fashion and textiles in her visual art narratives while Delhi-
based artist-cum-fashion designer Varun Sardana "believes in fashion as a form of visual art".

Sardana used "music, theatre and performance art in his shows to express ideas".
"Fashion is personalised art. The connect between the two is the thought process. I try to create
narratives," Sardana told IANS. One of his rare mixed media installations, "On My Passing
Away", brought clothes, fashion, social commentary and his persona under one roof in a bare
room.

"Using auto portraits of me in my skin and work from my recent collection of clothes, I have
tried to explore the duality of my existence," Sardana said.

All information on the same platform - arts, fashion and marketing - overlap, says gallerist Peter
Nagi. "The next bridge is politics with which art, fashion and design have to connect.

"Politics has to be more creative," Nagi said, predicting a trend for the future.

Roles have reversed, says graphic novelist and designer Sarnath Banerjee. "Fashion people are
working with narrative concepts and art is becoming decorative like fashion," Banerjee said.

History says art and fashion have been coming closer since the beginning of the 20th century
when leading European and American fashion designers became collectors of haute art -
allowing their art works to influence their clothes.

The overlapped expression area of each genre of modern arts expands and its border has been
vague or tends to be blended. As art becomes part of a real life away from an inaccessible
separated entity, there has been active grafts between fashion and high arts such as painting,
sculpture, architecture, and so on. Accordingly, this study selected the painting of Franz
Kline(1910~1962) who is a representative painter of Abstract Expressionism as motif. This study
tried to make 'Black-and-White Painting' after 1950, which expresses his bold and structural
thick stroke realized in clothes. The lines composed of straight line and biased line in the
painting of Franz Kline make one architectural structure, showing structural image by utilizing
the blank of the background in the active form. In this way, he tried to express a strong tension,
which contrasts with a vast space. The purpose of this study is to suggest creative clothing
through expressing materials suitable for fashion, applying the spirit of the artist and its plasticity
and to show that fashion can be another way of expression of art. This study could express Franz
Kline's bold and structural image of painting as motif of clothing by combining his architectural
line and characterized expression of 'Black-and-White Painting' with fashion through modern
embroidery techniques. Likewise, it turns out that the creation of novelty through combination of
painting and fashion is indefinite by developing a part or whole of painting into the motif of
clothing.

Abstract Expressionism" was never an ideal label for the movement, which developed in New
York in the 1940s and 1950s. It was somehow meant to encompass not only the work of painters
who filled their canvases with fields of color and abstract forms, but also those who attacked
their canvases with a vigorous gestural expressionism. Still Abstract Expressionism has become
the most accepted term for a group of artists who held much in common. All were committed to
art as expressions of the self, born out of profound emotion and universal themes, and most were
shaped by the legacy of Surrealism, a movement that they translated into a new style fitted to the
post-war mood of anxiety and trauma. In their success, these New York painters robbed Paris of
its mantle as leader of modern art, and set the stage for America's dominance of the international
art world.

This article reconsiders the impact of Russian émigré artist Alexander Liberman on
American Vogue during the late 1940s and 1950s. Not only was Liberman the art director of the
fashion magazine, but he also took pictures of French modern artists that he published in his
famous book The Artist in His Studio (1960) and was a prolific artist himself. Until now his
various activities have only been discussed separately. But considered together, as this article
argues, the pictures of French modern artists that were first displayed in Vogue educated Vogue’s
American readers to use colour in a sophisticated way within the manifold possibilities of colour
choices in American ready-to-wear fashion and interior decoration. The medium of colour
photography, supported strongly by Liberman, plays a crucial role in this argument. This article
will thus reconsider the relationship between émigrés and visual culture in Vogue, which is
usually discussed in design history as an adoption of layout strategies. It will also point out
Liberman’s ambivalent stance towards a progressive American consumer culture and a European
past affiliated with the fine arts; this seems typical of a changing view of European culture in the
1950s.

Dots, squares, and black paintings are in the world of abstract

and modern art. Most think this style of art is pointless but
actually, it’s unique, has expression, and can have reason
without showing one. People tend to judge abstract and
modern art to be futile and meaningless, so to manifest the
reason for these art pieces is to create a criteria explaining
the worth and purpose of one's creation.

In realistic and animated art, it’s all very similar in a way

because people take ideas from each other and get inspired.
In abstract art, every artist has their own unique and distinct
craft. An example of that is Mark Rothko’s work. His pieces
include limited amount of colors and rectangles that no one
has done before. Each artist creates their own style and build
around it. Their style doesn’t have a specific way that it’s
suppose to look unlike most art. This is also stated by Rachel
Barnes, “..artists tried to find a way of painting that did not
have to follow any particular style or school of art.”

Expression is very important in abstract and modern art.

Artist usually create what they feel, not what they see. You
can create your own thoughts, rather than someone else's.
When you draw something exactly how it looks, you can’t
express any emotion. Most people see abstract art as
pointless, but in reality, it has way more thought than realism.
“ Just because something causes you to have a feeling of
aesthetic beauty does not make it a work of art. “
(artrenewal), this is not true because there is no rule that
states what is and is not art.

Art can have a meaning without showing one. When you see
art pieces, you usually think about what you see which can be
comparable with others, but with abstract art, each audience
can find their own theories about the work. When you’re not
visually showing what you created, you make the audience
question what it is about. Even a black canvas has a meaning,
“...find something in nothing..” (tate).
A criteria for modern and abstract art has to have a rule that
states that you have to have a reasoning for your art work.
When you have no meaning or purpose, there is no point of
making it in the first place and also proves the point of people
who don’t enjoy modern art. In a survey, 30/67 people
thought that abstract and modern art was questionable and
useless, so to help them grasp abstract art, it is crucial to have
a intent. Another important rule is that it has to be original.
Modern art has been known for it’s unique look for each
individual artist, so copying another artist’s work will make
modern art look like any other art styles. Last rule is to have a
shock value on your audience. “Abstract art was created to
have a reaction and expression on people looking at it.”
(catholiceducation). These rules will show that abstract and
modern art isn’t what most media showcase it to be.

Even though abstract and modern art can look unpleasant

and low-quality, it holds sentimental thought and feelings
that most can’t visually see. Everyone has a different
imagination and interprets abstract and modern art. Art can
be in any form, even if it’s just dots, squares, and black
paintings.

The question whether fashion can be regarded as a form of art begs the question of what kinds of
things can legitimately be thus regarded. In the first section, some of the most recent
contributions to dealing with this issue are critically analyzed. The conclusion that emerges is
that—like art—clothes can provide the subject of historical research. The second section deals
with the aesthetics of clothes. If sartorial fashion can be a form of art then we need an aesthetics
of fashion. Whilst it would be difficult to contest the artistic quality of clothes throughout the
centuries, fashion—like architecture—fulfills primarily a functional dimension. Some of the key
concepts pertaining to classical aesthetics, such as taste in the writings of Edmund Burke, the
Third Earl of Shaftesbury, and Immanuel Kant with special reference to Kant’s less well-known
writings on anthropology under which he classified fashion, are discussed. Some of the more
recent contributions such as Curt J. Ducasse’s brilliant 1944 article “The Art of Personal Beauty”
are also discussed in this section. Finally, Karen Hanson in her article “Dressing Up, Dressing
Down: The Philosophic Fear of Fashion” addresses this important issue, arguing that—like
dance perhaps—fashion has systematically been disregarded by philosophers as a worthy subject
of research. Like so many articles in Fashion Theory, this article is an attempt to redress this
balance by seeking new ways of providing a serious theoretical and aesthetic basis for the study
of sartorial fashion.

A span of almost a decade separates Sung Bok Kim’s article entitled “Is Fashion Art?” (Fashion
Theory 2(1): 51–72) from my article but our choice of title is an indication of a sameness of
interest. At this point, however, all similarities end because the articles differ both in their “aims
and objectives” as well as choice of methodology. In her impressively researched article, Sung
Bok Kim’s intention was to address the paucity of “theoretical arguments or criticism within the
fashion world” and her aim was to “initiate the development of a critical approach to fashion by
arguing the relationship between fashion and art.” Coming from a background of philosophy and
history of art, I too address the relationship between fashion and art but the very fact that I
effected an effortless transition from my areas of expertise to fashion found unexpected
confirmation in Richard Martin’s statement—quoted by Sung Bok Kim—that he has “never
made a sufficient distinction between the two.” It sums up my own position. My points of
departure are classical aesthetics with specific focus on Immanuel Kant and the philosophy of art
and I have reached a similar conclusion albeit via a very different route. I hope that this
important debate will continue to attract the serious scholarship it deserves.

The second question will move from the philosophy of art to aesthetics to deal with the nature of
the aesthetic experience, including a survey of the emergence of the concept of taste in British
empiricist philosophy during the eighteenth century. Special emphasis will be placed on the
concepts of “disinterestedness” as well as Immanuel Kant’s “purposiveness without purpose” as
satisfactory explanations of how we might be allowed to have an aesthetic experience of sartorial
fashion in spite of the functional dimension predicated of clothes. The status of sartorial fashion
as a legitimate form of art remains a hotly debated issue although a survey of the most influential
writers on this subject seems to favor the conferring upon it the status of art. Anne Hollander
considers axiomatic that “dress is a form of visual art, a creation of images with the visible self
as its medium” (Hollander 1993: 311) and this statement becomes the premise in Elizabeth
Wilson’s book Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, the aim of which is to explore
fashion as “a cultural phenomenon, as an aesthetic medium for the expression of ideas, desires
and beliefs circulating in society”

The origins of the “art world” theory can be found in Kant’s writings on anthropology in which
society is the necessary context for fashion, which will be discussed later. A more recent
example of a practical application of the theory is provided by the notorious cover of the
February 1982 issue of Artforum, featuring an Issey Miyake outfit which doubled “as sculpture,
as painting and as aggressive and erotic spectacle” (Townsend 2002: 59). This bold transgression
marked the beginning of a succession of events and publications attempting to bridge the gap
perceived to exist between the worlds of art and fashion culminating in the 1996 extravaganza
that was the Florence Biennale. Its objective, espoused in the opening paragraph in the
acknowledgments section of the massive catalog entitled “Il Tempo é la moda” written by its
organizer Luigi Settembrini, was to “confront at the highest level—by using the interdisciplinary
method and in the form of an international cultural festival—some of the issues central to our
contemporary experience. The objective of the seven exhibitions in the Biennale was to explore
the contiguity, affinity, reciprocal influences and the creative relationship between the universe
of the fashion and visual arts: design, architecture, film, photography, music, costume and
communication, in the belief that within the universe of our common sensibilities fashion in its
complex and innovative worth is one of the most popular and significant expressions of mass
culture but one of the most undervalued” Beyond the rhetoric, however, its covert purpose was
to provide the much-needed institutionalized context for conferring art status upon sartorial
fashion, but the result was a monumental flop.

Fashion as Art Providing a logical definition of art in terms of the necessary and sufficient
conditions required to categorize something under the heading art has been central in the
philosophy of art. Noël Carroll provides a comprehensive “contemporary introduction” to this
problem by defining art in terms of key concepts such as representation, expression, formal
qualities, aesthetics, and finally the influential “institutional theory” he traces to George Dickie’s
1970s writings in which he provided just such a logical definition of art. No mean task,
especially in the light of twentieth-century avant-garde developments, whereby canonical
definitions were challenged by Marcel Duchamp’s mischievous games with categories. Dickie
provides a historical framework grounded in the Greek concept of mimesis through to Ludwig
Wittgenstein’s contention that instead of looking for logical definitions we should establish
“family resemblances” between the discrete art entities. Dickie concludes, rather unflatteringly,
that “the parade of dreary and superficial definitions that had been presented was for a variety of
reasons eminently rejectable.” Instead, apart from the self-explanatory quality of art-factuality
here considered as a necessary but not sufficient condition, we need to consider the relational
nature of our definition of art, which presupposes its institutionalization: “a work of art in the
classificatory sense is 1. an artefact, 2. a set of the aspects of which has been conferred upon it
the status of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain
institution (the art world)” (Dickie 1992: 438). Thus, a new concept, namely the “art world” is
postulated for the sole purpose of conferring upon artifacts the status of “art.” Duchamp must
have been aware of this simple fact, for when he placed his urinal in just such a context at the
Independents exhibition in New York in 1917 it fixed its status: it was art! Dickie observes that
Duchamp therefore engaged in a hitherto “unnoticed and unappreciated” human act, namely the
“conferring of the status of art; they simply used an existing institutional device in an unusual
way. Duchamp did not invent the art world, because it was there all along” (Dickie 1992: 438).
The conclusion is that “the Institutional Theory of Art” may sound like saying: “a work of art is
an object of which someone has said I christen this object a work of art. And it is rather like that,
although this does not mean that the conferring of the status of art is a simple matter”

If we accept Dickie’s hypothesis there should be no problem regarding the process of “conferring
of the status of art” on sartorial fashion, and Elsa Schiaparelli is a well-known case in point.
However, as Dickie points out, the process is not so simple after all. A recent objection comes
from Noël Carroll, who, whilst admitting that “Institutional Theories of Art are very
comprehensive,” states that they do not answer “pressing questions” such as: “must all art
emerge from a pre-existing network of social relations? Does it appear to be informative? Does it
depend upon stretching the notions of social institutions, social practices, and social relationships
beyond the breaking point?” (Carroll 1999: 239). We may well ask ourselves if the “Institutional
Theory of Art,” whilst providing the necessary sociocultural context, does not address issues
specifically related to the art object. Another theory, which like the “Institutional Theory” offers
only a partial definition, was proposed by Arthur Danto. Art is defined in terms of its historical
and theoretical framework – that is, its institutionalization is accomplished at an abstract level.
Thus what differentiates Andy Warhol’s Brillo cartons from those made by the manufacturer is
not some sort of intrinsic value: “what in the end marks the difference between a Brillo box and a
work of art consisting of a Brillo Box is a certain theory of art. It is the theory that takes it up
into the world of art, and keeps it from collapsing into the real object which it is (in a sense of is
other than that of artistic identification). Of course, without the theory one is unlikely to see it as
art, and in order to see it as part of the art-world, one must have mastered a good deal of artistic
theory as well as a considerable amount of the history of recent New York painting” (Danto
1998: 41). Elsewhere, Carroll refers to a “Historical Definition of Art” proposed by Jerold
Levinson, according to which “something is an artwork if it is intended to support some well
precedented art regard.” This selfexplanatory definition is particularly relevant to this debate
because— as Carroll points out—“it connects candidates to the history of art” (Carroll 1999:
241). It sums up the arguments in favor as follows: “the Historical Definition of Art maintains
that it is a necessary condition of art that it be underwritten by a certain intention on the part of
its creator: one intention to proffer the artefact for some acknowledged art regard. The opponent
of the Historical Definition denies that such intentions are always necessary. Sometimes the mere
fact that an artefact can be used to serve a historically acknowledged function suffices to call an
object art, irrespective of the original creator’s intention” (Carroll 1999: 249). Thus, the issue at
stake is that of intention versus function, acknowledged as a “profound one.” Both the
“Institutional Theory of Art” and the “Historical Definition of Art” are proved inconclusive.
Another definition is called for, and the method chosen to tackle the problem is procedural: what
do we do when in doubt regarding the artistic status of objects such as Duchamp’s “ready-
mades” or Warhol’s “Brillo Boxes?” The solution hinges on theself-reflective nature of
twentieth-century art and “a great deal of art has been dedicated to addressing the question of the
nature of art” (Carroll 1999: 259). In the case of the “Brillo Boxes” the question “what is art?” is
here addressed in “a particularly penetrating way, asking of itself what makes this object an
artwork when its indiscernible counterparts, everyday Brillo boxes—are not artworks? Warhol’s
‘Brillo Box’ thus addressed an antecedently acknowledged, ongoing art-world concern in a
creative way by focussing the reflexive art-world question ‘What is Art?’ in a canny and
strikingly perspicuous manner, reframing and redirecting it as the question: ‘What makes art-
works different from real things?’” (Carroll 1999: 253). The answer is to provide a “historical
narrative.” Such an approach to classifying artworks “establishes the art status of a candidate by
connecting the work in question to previously acknowledged artworks and practices. In this
regard, it may appear to recall the family resemblance approach” (Carroll 1999: 256). Both the
“Institutional Theory of Art” and the “Historical Definition of Art” as definitions are subject to
the pitfalls of circularity, which is not the case with narratives. Moreover, Carroll privileges the
method of “historical narration” for a simple reason: all the famous theories of art, “including the
representational theory of art, the expression theory, formalism, and aesthetic theories of art—
have been wrecked by the appearance of avant-garde innovations. Compared to these
approaches, the method of historical narration has nothing to fear from the avant-garde; as a
procedure for identifying art it is well tailored to incorporating the mutations of the avant-garde
into the continuous evolution of art” (Carroll 1999: 264). Historical narration emerges, therefore,
as the preferred classificatory tool and method for dealing with modern and contemporary
developments. Acquiring the appropriate methodology is a necessary but not a sufficient
condition for success, and in this instance one reason is to do with the nature of histories of art
and fashion. Providing a history of art presupposes a clear and distinct idea of what kind of
things this is a history of, and whilst it could be argued that its subject matter is as old as the
human endeavor to create art, this is not true of art history as an academic discipline. Once this
distinction is established it can be stated that, differing methodologies notwithstanding, we have
a historiography of art history that emerged during the second half of the nineteenth century with
the pioneering writings of Jacob Burkhardt, Heinrich Wölfflin, Bernard Berenson, Joseph
Crowe, and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. Legitimizing art history as an academic discipline
provides also the justification for a “historical definition of art,” establishing it as a valid
approach. The study of clothes from a historical perspective is an even more recent endeavor
and, therefore, it has not yet acquired a status equal to that of the fine arts; this may well have
something to do with the perceived lower status of craft. Nevertheless, the historical study of
clothes is inextricably linked to and dependent on that of visual art for a simple reason: their
perishable nature. For the art historian, clothes provide important clues regarding issues of class,
gender, social status, etc. as well as conveyors of meaning in iconographical studies. To date art
historians have regarded their material primarily as historical documents that happen also to be
art rather than the other way round. If we turn to clothes, the analogy works at one level, but we
are still left with the aesthetic dimension. The second section of the article will attempt to
construe an aesthetics of sartorial fashion. This issue has been addressed in an original way by
Anne Hollander in her analysis of the relationship between painted and “real life” clothes in
Western European history and she rightly points out that to consider the aesthetics of dress “from
the point of view of economic or political history, or the history of technology, or even of social
customs, with which it is so closely allied, may be very illuminating on the question of how such
matters affect symbolic invention in clothing. But to do only this is to limit dress to the status of
an elevated craft.” This would align fashion with “pottery, tapestry or furnishings” whereas it
deserves “a more serious kind of attention” and to that effect, clothing should be on equal footing
with architecture, whose functional dimension did not preclude its well-entrenched artistic status
It is nevertheless puzzling that the uncontested artistic quality of clothes throughout the centuries
has not yet placed them on an equal footing with architecture. One of the reasons is that whilst
architecture has unequivocally been perceived as a heroic endeavor worthy of the label art, not
least because of the monumental expenses involved, connotations of frivolity continue to
overshadow attempts at treating sartorial fashion as a subject worthy of serious academic
research. We start with Immanuel Kant’s harsh words against fashion, whose classification under
the unflattering headings of vanity and folly go a long way towards confirming the above. A key
concept that dominated eighteenth-century aesthetics was that of the “feeling of pleasure and
displeasure,” in other words, personal avowals of taste, and Kant was no exception in postulating
a distinction between a posteriori (empirical) and a priori aesthetic judgments, whereby our
feelings of pleasure/displeasure determine the aesthetic judgment in the former but is determined
by it in the latter. Such a pure (a priori ) aesthetic pleasure is caused, unlike the impure sensuous
pleasure, by the harmonious intercourse between our faculties of the imagination and the
understanding.
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Viewpoint consists of the lectures in anthropology Kant gave
between 1772 and 1795; “he began writing the book only after he was certain that it would not
compete with his lectures” (Cerf in Kant 1963). The book was very likely written in 1796/7 and
first published in Köningsberg in 1798. In it, he moved away from the central preoccupation of
establishing the a priori grounds of the judgment of taste. Nor is he concerned with ascriptions of
avowals of the kind “I like/dislike X;” rather, his interest is lodged “somewhere in between these
extremes, which articulate what is considered good taste by some society” (Cerf in Kant 1963:
131). Within this framework fashion is relegated to social custom rather than aesthetics, here
defined as an imitation of the others, specifically of “more important persons” as, for example,
the child would imitate grownups and members of the lower class people of rank and so on …
Man is naturally inclined to compare himself in his conduct with more important persons in
order not “to appear of lower status than others and this in matters, moreover, where no
consideration is given to usefulness. A law of such imitation is called fashion.” The frivolous
nature of this kind of imitation provides the justification for predicating vanity and folly of
fashion: “thus fashion belongs under the heading of vanity for its intent is of no inner value; and
also under the heading of folly, for it is folly to be compelled by mere example into following
slavishly the conduct shown us by many in society”

Characteristically, Kant presents us with an antinomy: (a) to keep in fashion is a matter of taste;
(b) fashion itself “is not really a matter of taste (for it can be extremely tasteless).” This is
resolved as follows: “it is better to be a fool within fashion than out of it, if one really wishes to
call this vanity by the harsh name of folly” and because “all fashions are already by definition
changeable ways of living” keeping up with change is tantamount to keeping in fashion. The
“feeling of pleasure and displeasure” is here replaced by vanity— that is, not of liking or
disliking, but misplaced affectation in the mindless imitation of those considered socially
superior. It could be argued that by postulating that society provides the framework that makes
fashion possible, Kant anticipates in a way the “Institutional Theory of Art” not for art, which is
transcendental, but for fashion, which is relational. The relational nature of taste was developed
by Edmund Burke, whose pivotal book A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origins of our Ideas of
the Sublime and the Beautiful was first published in 1757, the same year as Hume’s equally
influential Of the Standard of Taste, which would have been familiar to Kant. This is confirmed
by Kant’s oddly elitist reference to the sublime at the end of his passage on fashion: “Something
sublime which is at the same time beautiful, has splendour (for instance, a resplendent, starred
sky or, if this does not sound too lowly, a church like St. Peter’s in Rome), and splendour can be
brought together with the true ideal taste, pomp, however, is bragging and spectacular
ostentation, and though it may be joined with taste, will meet resistance from it. For pomp is
meant for the great mass of people, which contains much rabble, and the rabble’s taste is dull and
depends more on sensation than on judgement” (Kant 1963: 72). In the Enquiry Edmund Burke
divides passions into self-preservation and society, the latter further divided into the society of
sexes for “the purpose of propagation” and general society. Passions in general society are
complex and Burke distinguishes three ways in which members in society link: sympathy,
imitation, and ambition. It appears that Kant’s definition of fashion as upward imitation
incorporates Burke’s own definition of imitation, whilst its pejorative connotations would also
incorporate ambition. Our desire to imitate, argues Burke, is crucial in society given that “this
forms our manners, our opinions, our lives. It is one of the strongest links in society; it is a
species of mutual compliance which all men yield to each other without constraint to themselves,
and which is extremely flattering to them” (Burke 1990: 45). Kant’s definition of fashion is a
special kind of imitation, which rather than being a “species of mutual compliance” is a matter of
vanity, approximating Burke’s concept of ambition, which can be pleasurable when “excelling
his fellows in something deemed valuable amongst them,” but equally if we cannot distinguish
ourselves by something excellent “we begin to take complacency in some singular infirmities,
follies or defects of one kind or another” (Burke 1990: 46). Kant predicates vanity and folly of
fashion, here defined as imitation (Kant 1963: 71).There seems to be little difference between
Burke’s “complacency in some singular infirmities,” of which folly is one, resulting from
misplaced ambition, and Kant’s notion of slavish imitation of conduct in society, also deemed as
folly, given that in both instances we are presented with asymmetrical statements of the kind “X
is nothing but Y,” which are reductionist (Nozick 1990: 627). In this case they debunk ambition
and imitation to “complacency in follies” and “mindless imitation,” respectively. Taste as a
special faculty enabling us to evaluate aesthetic qualities such as the beautiful and the sublime
played a seminal part in eighteenthcentury thought when aesthetics emerged as an independent
branch of philosophy. The conjunctive nature of the aesthetic experience as subjective and
claiming inter-subjective validity has baffled philosophers who have endeavored to solve the
apparent paradox in a number of ways. The British Empiricists have paid particular attention to
the notion of taste, starting with the Third Earl of Shaftesbury. In his Characteristics of Men,
Manners, Opinions, Times, first published in 1711, he postulates an “inward eye” he called
“moral sense” which doubled as “ethical” when applied to actions and dispositions and
“aesthetic” when applied to nature and art (Beardsley 1966: 179–83). Shaftesbury’s “inward
eye” was subsequently replaced by “taste,” defined as a capacity for our unmediated response to
“feelings of pleasure and displeasure. The two important essays dealing with “taste” by David
Hume and Edmund Burke, referred to earlier, were both published in 1757. Hume’s argument
hinges on the fact that beauty is not a quality in objects but a psychological response triggered by
interacting with them. Our responses are subjective and therefore wildly different; nevertheless,
“it appears, then, that amidst all the variety and caprice of taste there are certain general
principles of approbation or blame” (Hume 2005: 493). There is consensus with regard to
excellence, although, Hume concedes, that as with any other of our senses which differ with each
individual, in the case of taste some are endowed with a “delicacy of imagination” that makes
their ability to discern more acute. Moreover, he postulates the interesting notion of “the
qualified observer” whose job is to develop his “taste” to an optimum standard: the critic. Burke
provides an exhaustive analysis of the sensible qualities that make something (nature or culture)
either sublime or beautiful, also offering a psychological explanation of our experiencing them.
A different approach comes from idealist philosophy; thus, in his Critique of Judgement,
published in 1790, Immanuel Kant rejects this rather simplistic empiricist definition of taste,
replacing it with a new framework of classifying judgments and relegating the judgment of taste
to the complicated a priori synthetic category. Taste is both necessary and universal—the two
most important logical aspects alongside disinterestedness and purposiveness without purpose—
which constitute the Kantian definition of the analytic of the beautiful because they establish its a
priori aspect. It would be interesting to compare fashion with the “time-based” arts such as
photography, the cinema, and video art, whose reluctant acceptance into the pantheon of the
sister arts had its fair share of controversy. There is an important distinction to be made between
a photograph and a painting qua physical objects given that the former can be regarded as a
“token” whilst the latter is a “type.” This wellknown distinction introduced by Richard
Wollheim—who borrowed it from C. S. Peirce—states that “a physical object that can be
identified as Ulysses or Der Rosenkavalier is not a view that can long survive the demand that
we should pick out or point to that object.” Meanwhile Raphael’s Donna velata or St. George in
the Pitti and Uffizi, respectively, are coextensive with the physical object. The painting qua art
object is the “type;” copies of Ulysses or performances of Der Rosenkavalier are “tokens” of the
“type,” whose ontological status remains debatable (Wollheim 1978: 90–6). In the case of
photography or the cinema, it can be argued that prints are “tokens” of the “type” whose
ontological status is again problematic, but less relevant to this argument. A garment is a “type;”
the only parallel we find within the “timebased” arts is scenography, another “Cinderella” of the
visual arts. Like clothes, stage designs are ephemeral, co-extensive with the physical time of the
production, made of expendable materials. Both clothes and stage

The purpose of this study was to gather information and

opinions from major contemporary fashion illustrators in
order to enrich classroom teaching of the subject and to
compensate for the void in literature about post-1960
artists and their work. Individualized letters were sent to
artists, most of whom were producing advertising or
editorial art for New York stores, designers, firms, or
publications. The artists were asked to respond to two
pages of open-ended questions about their careers and
other fashion illustration topics. Fifty-five artists replied in
written form regarding their educational and professional
experiences, suggestions for content and teaching
approach in a beginning fashion illustration course,
sources of poses, preferred artists' tools and media, and
work setting. They also assessed the dominance of
fashion photography over illustration in editorial portions
of fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper's
Bazaar and cited current trends and influences. in
fashion art. The quantity and time span of the artists'
responses produced a chronological overview of fashion
illustration trends from the late 1960s to the present,
together with speculations about future use and status of
fashion illustration.